Books, their materiality and their structure can have a metaphorical dimension; they may even appear as “materialized metaphors”. Artists’ books and literary works of unconventional and striking book shapes reflect the metaphorical potential of the book and make it vivid. Sometimes, however, such works of book art allow for different, even controversial interpretations, which can be exemplified by examples in which the metaphors of the “palimpsest”, the “blackening”, and the “labyrinth” appear concretized.
In what way have recent literary texts responded to impulses that have emanated from the concept of “interdiscursivity”? Based on the thesis that impulses have emanated from this concept to literature itself, which have been reflected on a thematic as well as on a formal level, examples of a specific text form are presented: that of the alphabetic-lexicographic compendium of terms and keywords. Referring to the concept of literary interdiscursivity, the article shows how and from which motives knowledge-discursive forms of representation are unfolded in lexicographic-literary texts – also and especially with a view to individual expressions of knowledge as well as to margins and boundaries of knowledge. Here, lexicography becomes an occasion to undermine the boundary between the factual and the imaginary (Jorge Luis Borges), to deal with theoretical discourses as with a pharmaceutical construction kit (Jochen Hörisch), to look at encyclopaedic knowledge from its margins (Christine Blättler – Erik Porath Margins of the Encyclopaedia) and to sketch imaginary philosophical discourses (Andreas Urs Sommer).
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